


Empty sheets

by Del (goddessdel)



Category: Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Angst, Character Study, Darillium (Doctor Who), Drabble, F/M, Grief/Mourning, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Reflection, at least I don't think so, not actually nearly as angsty as may be implied
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-18
Updated: 2020-01-18
Packaged: 2021-02-18 22:49:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 436
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22301116
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/goddessdel/pseuds/Del
Summary: Without her, their bed barely gets made at all.
Relationships: Eleventh Doctor/River Song, The Doctor/River Song, Twelfth Doctor/River Song
Comments: 4
Kudos: 70





	Empty sheets

**Author's Note:**

> Just a drabble and a bit - the Doctor reflects on River and his relationship with his wife.
> 
> Written: 1/20/17 - 11/3/19 [because I kept thinking I'd expand it out and then decided not to. So instead you get all my meta on the Doctor and River in fic form. Not sorry.]

He does most of the tidying up while River sleeps, since he needs less and he never has been any good at being still.

When she gets up, River always makes their bed. She makes it with hospital corners and the military precision that guarantees any hard currency would bounce off of it. It's a holdover from her training as Mels. Some habits last lifetimes.

The Doctor would know.

Without her, their bed barely gets made at all. He gets distracted and only sometimes remembers to straighten the blankets. Not that he sleeps much without her curled into him.

For a man who has spent lifetimes alone, it's amazing how quickly he forgot how to sleep by himself. Not that he slept much before her. It's worse after. His bed became theirs and it's cold and lonely without her. He tosses and turns in a bed that feels too big, missing the weight of River's body slung over his, her hair trying to suffocate him in its soft, magical depths.

He just misses her.

The Doctor takes to standing catnaps rather than sleeping in their bed without River. There are other bedrooms but leaving theirs to gather dust seems disloyal. As though she really were dead.

She's not - not yet - not quite, and he holds onto that technicality - that foolish hope. Runs from even the faintest mention of libraries or Darillium with a quiet, haunted sort of desperation, as though he can outrun her fate. Their fate.

Because he's hollow without River, empty like their bed. She's too much a part of him, his wife, and he doesn't know how to live his lives without her in them.

He almost doesn't, either. He runs out the last of his lives in an endless war because he's tired of running away and being the only survivor when all he's ever wanted to do is save everyone else. His new lives are both a blessing and a curse.

When he sees her, sparkling in her cape and the snow, it is such a relief - such a joy - to see her properly in front of him that he doesn't even try to stop the utterly besotted grin that splits his face.

He's missed her so much that, when they land on Darillium, he doesn't turn to demand they run away, greedy for whatever time he can steal with her.

And when he realizes just how long a night on Darillium is, he wishes he'd never run in the first place. It's a gift - a spare lifetime between them. Never enough time, no, not with River, but _time_.

Time enough.


End file.
